Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West

I welcome An Coimisiún Pleanála's decision to refuse planning for a data centre in Mayo on climate grounds, so all hope is not lost. I thank People Before Profit Deputies for tabling this really important motion. On behalf of the Labour Party, I brought a relatively similar motion to the House back in June, calling for targeted energy credits funded through a data centre levy as well as the introduction of a moratorium on the new construction of data centres. I did so and I imagine that the Deputies who are bringing forward this motion today did so as well because we recognise that Ireland has a growing problem with the way our energy system is being managed. There is a fundamental question here about who our energy system is being built for, who is paying for it and whether ordinary households and small businesses are getting a fair deal. Ireland has some of the highest electricity costs in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of households are struggling to keep up with their energy bills. We know that more than half a million electricity and gas accounts are in arrears. Yet, at precisely the same time, we see enormous growth in electricity demand from one particular sector, data centres. As is stated in the motion, they accounted for 88% of the increase in demand for electricity since 2015. That is staggering.
As I have said before, I accept that data centres, to a degree, are a part of modern society and our industrial society. They play a part in the digital economy and so on. Whenever any of us raise these concerns about the Government's approach to data centres and the seemingly boundless expansion, we get these kind of strawmen arguments saying that people use phones, social media, and all that kind of rubbish. The Labour Party has never argued that data centres should not exist. We acknowledge their place in modern society, but we have concerns about what is driving the current proliferation of data centres that we are seeing, not just in Ireland but elsewhere too, and the role that the AI race is playing in this. We have to question what data centres are being used for and if we want to support these purposes. We spend a lot of time in this house talking about the dangers of AI, reining in AI and regulating the use of social media so that it does not harm our children.
Why, on the one hand, are we doing that, and on the other hand, are we facilitating and actively encouraging the infrastructure that facilitates all of this? The use to which data centres are being put has to be part of the discussion about whether we want to continue to facilitate them. We have not had that discussion yet. It is not credible for this Government to continue to allow the expansion of data centres without properly considering the consequences for our society, as well as for our electricity system, for our energy prices, for investment elsewhere in our economy, and for our decarbonisation efforts elsewhere in the country. There is a simple principle here. If a particular group of users is creating significant additional costs for the energy system, they should shoulder the burden of those costs - some 88% of the costs, you might say.
That principle is particularly important at a time when households are struggling to pay their bills. The Government cannot ask families to absorb higher energy costs while simultaneously providing an energy system that gives very large energy users preferential treatment. Recent figures show that data centres accounted for 23% of energy consumed in Ireland last year. It is around 50% of the energy consumed in Dublin. This is an extraordinary level of demand from a single sector and it does not show any signs of slowing down. Even when comparisons are made to Germany's heavy industry and the fact that we do not have one, in Germany heavy industry accounts for about 25% of energy use. Data centres are already at that level here and all the trajectories are that in a few years' time, it will be a third. When is that too much? We are going to scale up significantly because the de facto moratorium on new connections for data centres was got rid of last year.
We know the impact that this has already had on household bills. A Friends of the Earth report has shown us that data centre energy demand added hundreds of millions of euro to household electricity bills between 2015 and 2023, with a further €1.5 billion potentially being added over the coming decade. That amounts to about a week's wages for a low-paid worker being added to the bill of every household in the country. We also have the extraordinary situation where households can be paying substantially more for their electricity per unit than large data centres. Fundamentally, if large energy users are placing additional demands on the electricity network, they should be making a contribution that reflects those demands. We should be placing a levy on their energy consumption. It is some form of punishment or some anti-technology or anti-business measure. It is just about basic fairness. It is a fact that data centre demand is contributing to higher system costs and higher electricity prices, so the companies benefiting from that demand should contribute towards the cost. The money raised through such a levy, as the motion here calls for, should be used to help to address the costs being experienced elsewhere in the system, including supports for households struggling with their energy bills.
I might have suggested a more targeted approach for the energy credits than is put forward in this motion, but we are arguing over minutiae here. The principle is the same, and we need to make sure that those who are forcing the country to have these costs are paying their fair share. Hundreds of thousands of households are struggling to keep up with their electricity and gas bills. Their wages are being swallowed up by rent, mortgages, food and transport; take your pick. Energy is just the latest one of those. No one is presenting energy credits as a substitute for fixing Ireland's energy system. That is the other thing to say. Such is the extent of the energy crisis we are in that immediate assistance is desperately needed for households up and down the country while we deal with the underlying problem.
We need to address why our energy is so expensive in the first place. Everyone in the House knows what we need to do, that is, rapidly scale up renewable generation. We are miles and miles off target for our offshore wind generation. We are doing well on solar, but we have to do better on offshore wind. That is where the real gains can be. Electricity demand is skyrocketing precisely because of all the data centres that are being built. If renewable electricity is absorbed almost entirely by the new demand from data centres, then that renewable electricity cannot simultaneously help us electrify transport, decarbonise industry or move households away from fossil fuels. Almost all new renewable energy that is being generated onshore in this country through wind and solar is being gobbled up by data centres. It is affecting our efforts to decarbonise elsewhere in our economy. We cannot ignore that.
While this motion is primarily about energy and affordability, there is an important climate dimension to it as well. We cannot separate the two. A secure energy system has to be a cleaner energy system, and a cleaner energy system has to work for households. The Labour Party supports calls for a moratorium on further data centre expansion until and unless we have sufficient renewable generation and grid capacity to accommodate new demand without putting upward pressure on household bills or undermining our climate objectives. We need to get the fundamentals of our energy system right before we can allow for unfettered increases in demand. Data centres need to make their fair contribution toward both supporting households through the present crisis and in allowing us to build the infrastructure needed to support a transition to a cleaner, more secure energy system for everyone. That is how we build a system that works for the whole country. It does not have to be a choice between economic development and climate action, but we have to carefully manage scarce energy resources and ensure that economic development does not come at the expense of households or our climate.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17